'No Man's Sky' just planted its flag as a next-gen 'Minecraft'

The Foundation update for No Man's Sky is here, and it's remarkably familiar. Didn't Minecraft tread this path already?
Back in May 2009, the game that would eventually be known as Minecraft launched as little more than an idea: Players could wander around a procedurally generated open world using tools to reshape it like an elaborate Lego sandbox.
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A few months later, the earliest version of what would eventually be